After years of dry and hot springs in Alberta, wildfire evacuations are nothing new for evacuees and the communities that step up to welcome them in.
In north-central Alberta, the 1,300 residents of Swan Hills were ordered to leave Monday night ahead of an advancing, wind-whipped fire.
People living in the town roughly 200 km northwest of Edmonton were asked to register at the Allan & Jean Millar Centre in Whitecourt, about 80 km to the south.
The community of about 10,000 people along Highway 43 has been a safe haven for wildfire evacuees from several different communities north of it in recent years.
“We’re a hub in this part of west-central Alberta,” Whitecourt Mayor Tom Pickard said on Tuesday outside the evacuation reception centre. “We’re centrally located, we’re right in the middle of the boreal forest.”
“We’ve had people here from Fox Creek, Valleyview, the First Nations around Valleyview — even as far north as Yellowknife over the last couple of years.”
Pickard said a little more than 700 people have registered since Swan Hills evacuation began Monday night. A few hundred are staying at local hotels while others are staying with family and friends or have moved on to other parts of Alberta.
Pickard has lived and worked in the Whitecourt area for more than 40 years, as both a Mountie and in oil and gas before becoming mayor, and said many residents and businesses in town are doing their part to help.
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“I know our restaurants are busy, hotels are busy and we’re just very pleased that we can help,” he said. “We’re happy when people feel safe here because that’s what we’re trying to deliver.”
“People in Whitecourt are hard-working, compassionate people,” he said Tuesday, noting that it’s not the first time his community has hosted evacuees.
“When they can help others, they do.”
Those who left Swan Hills Monday night said it was a calm, organized process — one they’ve done before.
“We’re pretty seasoned now from two years ago, so we know what to expect,” said Gina MacDonald, who spent Monday packing up essentials and preparing to leave with the kids and animals. She wasn’t too stressed about the fire.
“I know our fire department’s the best, so I’m not worried. I know they have the town, so it’s in good hands.”
Jay and Robyn Marriott have lived in Swan Hills for 25 years, where Jay also grew up.
“I think this is about my fifth evacuation in total. My brother’s probably been through ten up there,” Jay said.
They began preparing to leave after being alerted Sunday night they may have to do so if the fire grew.
“We just spent the day slowly getting things ready,” Robyn said. “Once they started talking evacuation, we got our bags together, food together, dog stuff together.”
On Tuesday, the fire north of Swan Hills remained about seven to eight km north of town. The Marriott’s son has been checking his security cameras, which they said has helped to ease anxieties.
“Everything seems to be nice and peaceful,” Robyn said.
Alberta Wildfire officials said night vision-equipped helicopters, firefighters and heavy equipment worked overnight, when fire activity was low — growing from 2,000 to 2,266 hectares — but activity was expected to increase again Tuesday, with hot, dry and windy conditions.
“The weather is what the weather is,” said Alberta Wildfire information officer Derrick Forsythe.
“It’s gonna be warmer and it’s windy and it’s still pretty dry. So that’s gonna to be challenging, but we’ve been on these fires for a long time and we know what we’re doing.”
Arriving in Swan Hills on Tuesday were two wildland urban interface crews, a high-volume water delivery system, an incident command team and additional firefighting crews.
“We’re working pretty closely with our partners — there’s a lot of industrial sites out there — so we’re (working) closely with them to make sure that we’ve got those things covered and looked after,” Forsythe said.
The fire near Swan Hills isn’t the only fire of concern in Alberta — as of Tuesday afternoon, there were 27 active blazes in the northern and western regions Alberta Wildfire monitors.
On Tuesday, people living in a remote area southeast of Hinton in the foothills were told to prepare for a possible evacuation because of an out-of-control 400-hectare fire burning west of the former coal mining town of Mercoal.
There’s also a 3,100-hectare wildfire in eastern Alberta, on the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range roughly seven km north of the Kirby airstrip, that’s a concern for oil and gas operations in the area.
“We’re managing the fires on the ground right now with the resources we have in the province,” Forsythe said. “We just ask people to take that that extra time and be careful when they are in the forested areas.”
— with files from Aaron Sousa, The Canadian Press
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